R.I.P. Ripdev

Today is indeed a grave day for the whole Jailbreak community. The famous Ripdev team, the creators of the legendary Installer for the iPhone and later, Icy, considered by many a much more efficient prototype of Cydia, have announced that they are closing their doors.

It’s been a great two years, but unfortunately, the time has come for Ripdev to close its doors. There are many reasons for this, most of which we probably will never disclose (unless we are forced to). The important thing is that due to circumstances we will likely be unable to support the titles we have created over the years further. They will be perfectly operatable on the firmware versions they were created for, and you will be able to download and use them — but they will no longer be supported and updated (except for i2Reader Pro that is not being developed by us and that will be kept in sync with its App Store version). We will, of course, transfer the licenses to the new devices — just email us. Our Cydia repository will be operational until at least next year, so be assured that the products you liked and paid for will be available for you to (re)install.

Icy, our lightweight DPKG installer, is now available in source form under MIT license. You’re free to do whatever you want with it. It would be nice if someone picks up the project…

It was a honor to be in the iPhone jailbreak community, and we are proud that we have certainly made a ripple or two. Farewell!

This is a huge blow to the Jailbreak community, especially since Ripdev has always been one of the teams, adamant about the most controversial side of jailbreaking – cracking AppStore apps and games. They even created the Kali protection system for apps, that I noted in the Jailbreak Wars article, which has not been cracked by this time. For a long time it has even been rumoured that Kali has been bought by Apple and is supposed to be used in the also long rumoured Premium Games AppStore section.

We have yet to see how will this affect the iPhone community, but we can expect Apple to increase their pressure on jailbreaking, now that one of the titan teams, holding it up, has gone the way of the dodo.